"By the Arm of God."
"Who is your enemy and mine and your children's children's?"
"A traitor!"
"Y' can g'won up."
As they emerged into the loft they were each greeted by Mr. Gumama and then dropped themselves awkwardly about on stools and window-sills, with the whispering stiffness of people in their best clothes. Beppo, moaning, now lay huddled on his side and, as occasion arose, they stepped about and over him without the slightest interest or even malign amusement in his plight. By-and-by he got to his hands and knees and crawled into a corner, where, with the now fatally ruined blue scarf held to his nose, he shivered himself slowly quiet. But his pomatum came into play with the laborers, who sat seriously down by the still bright rear window and beautified their heads with it, cheerfully assisting each other's toilet as amiable monkeys often do and even smearing themselves a little from the communal mercies of the water-pitcher. "Enough!" Mr. Gumama sternly rebuked them. "Business alone!"
They looked meekly at him, stricken, and he called one of them by name—"Take the stairs!"
The man crossed to the opening in the floor and seated himself a little back from where it gave into the room; the knife which he drew from inside his clothes seemed a trifle clouded and he sat idly polishing it. Mr. Gumama looked at his large silver watch and, stepping to the front window, glanced out. A certain anxiety in him began to make itself felt.
More and more men arrived, but evidently not the looked-for men. A strapping youth began unconcernedly to converse with Beppo about a duel they were to fight. "I cannot remain forever a picciotto. If I do not fight the next duel how shall I ever get to be a member?"
"Me they will not yet let fight again." Beppo stopped sniffling and displayed, a bit above his knee, a wound that might have been made with a knife like that in his belt or a short dagger. "In two duels have I lost, and if I lose the third I lose my entry."
The strapping youth began to get excited. "With whom, then, can I fight? How long do they intend to keep me waiting? See, now, I want my rights—I want to be promoted—"